The Mechanism of Rising Tone Merger in Hong Kong Cantonese: An Acoustic Approach

Abstract

Hong Kong Cantonese (HKC) stands out from other tone languages in the world by having a rich system of tonal contrast. There are six contrastive tones in standard HKC, namely high level, high rising, mid level, extra-low level, low rising and low level tone. However, this highly complex system is in the process of merging (e.g. Bauer, Cheung and Cheung 2003; Mok and Wong 2010a, 2010b). In a production and perception study on contemporary HKC tones conducted by the first and second authors, it is confirmed that the two rising tones, high rising (HR)[35] and low rising (LR)[23], are merged in a subcommunity of HKC speakers. What remains unclear is the mechanism of the merger. Are the HR tone words transferred to the LR tone or vice versa? What are the acoustic differences of the rising tones produced by the mergers as compared with those by the non-mergers? This paper takes on the above questions by examining the acoustic properties of the two rising tones produced by the mergers as well as the non-mergers of two different age groups .....